I think we concede too much when we define tyranny as being solely the result of an oppressive government. Do you think the good people living in poor sections of major cities feel tyrannized by the gangs that rule the streets? Is there no need or right for those people to defend themselves and their loved ones against that type of tyranny?

I am also struck by the fact that the "rational" discussion of "reasonable" firearm restrictions does not include the human cost that will be paid for any restriction on access to firearms. The most aggressive gun control advocates claim that firearms are used for self defense "only" around 60,000 times a year; that is still over four times as often as they are used to take the life of another. The Centers for Disease Control, usually no friend of the second amendment, estimates that intruders were frightened away by an armed residence of the home after being seen by the householder approximately a half a million times a year (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9591354); even with the limitation of the intruder being actually seen by the resident, this scenario takes places around 40 times as often as a firearm-related murder. Gary Kleck's estimates of 2 to 2.5 million defensive firearm uses per year are frequently demeaned by gun control activists, but they have been published in peer-reviewed journals of criminology such as The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology and The Journal of Quantitative Criminology; his figures lead one to conclude that firearms are used for lawful self defense as much as 150 times as often as for murder.

It is neither reasonable nor just to assume that denying 60,000, or half a million, or two and a half million people access to effective self defense will not cost of human lives.